like a castle crumbling (we all outgrow our dreams)
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: In which Percy is a Squib. "One day, Percy took his mother's wand and waved it. No sparks ever came." For Cassie.


For Cassie on the GGE and for the Hunger Games Competition, Round 1 (Emotion: fury, Dialogue: "I… can't.", Character: Percy Weasley, Setting: The Burrow, Subject: Flying Class).

_Word count:_ 1868

**like a castle crumbling****(****we all outgrow our dreams)**

On his fourth birthday, Percy waited until everyone had finished their cake to climb on the table and declare that he would become Minister of Magic one day.

Bill and Charlie laughed, the way older brothers do when their younger siblings tell them they'll be heroes when they grow up, but his father smiled and his mother was bursting with pride as she swept him into a hug.

Later, she'll give him a knitted sweater the color of the clothes his father wears to go work at the Ministry, and his father will ruffle his hair, whispering almost to himself 'my son, the Minister'.

It'll be the happiest he's ever felt.

**-x-x-x-**

Some time after his six birthday, Percy took his mother's wand when she left behind to deal with the twins wandering yet again where they shouldn't, and waved it.

No sparks, no warm feeling, no cold feeling – nothing ever came.

He put the wand back where he found it and locked himself in his room.

That night, he stayed up and whispered to the empty room that he was going to be Minister of Magic one day, and that he'd be the greatest wizard to have ever lived.

When dawn came, he could almost believe his own lies.

**-x-x-x-**

He tried again with his father's wand, then his great-aunt's and his great-uncle's. He sneaked off with an older cousin's wand and tried desperately to make to make spells work for him the way they worked for everyone around him.

It was always the same ritual. He would take the wand and try to feel the magic within it, the way his mother used to tell him she felt her own magic when he asked her how she got her wand, and then he would wave it around, sometimes following instructions for a spell he had read about in his father's books, sometimes with no other goal than just to feel something happen.

It never worked though, and with each try Percy could feel his hope diminishing.

Already his older brothers had manifested magic – just the other day, Bill had repaired their mother's favorite cup when he had accidently broken it, and before that, Percy had witnessed Fred (or maybe it was George) – who was so much younger than he was – turn Ron's hair pink when no one else had been looking because they thought he need cheering up.

Their mother had called them precocious, and his father had told him that there was nothing wrong with his lack of apparent magical abilities, but Percy had seen the worried looks his parents shared when they thought he wasn't paying attention.

There was something wrong with him, and his parents knew it.

**-x-x-x-**

Percy's favorite brother was Bill. He's the eldest, and sure he was now away at Hogwarts for almost the entire year, but he was the only one who ever seemed to take Percy's dream of becoming Minister seriously, and the only one who really encouraged him to pursue it.

Bill helped their mother teach him how to read, and he'd always made time to help him if their parents weren't available. Bill helped him understand what their father's old Charms books said, and he gave Percy his first Flying lessons.

That was a disaster – it felt like the broom he tried to fly on kept attempting to throw him off, and the cold as well as the intense feeling of vertigo ensured that he would probably never try to fly on a broom ever again – but he was perfectly happy to just read about Quidditch and flying while his brothers practiced the actual sport.

He liked all his brothers though, of course he did. But for some reason he felt like Bill just got him in a way Charlie or the twins couldn't.

Maybe that was why Bill was the first person Percy told he didn't think he could do magic.

**-x-x-x-**

The evening after Charlie got his Hogwarts' letter, Percy waited in Bill's room, his brother's wand in hand. He had hoped something would happen if he waved it, but as usual, nothing did. It still felt just like a piece of dead wood to him, as useless as a branch he'd pick up from the ground would be.

He had planned a whole speech, but the moment his brother entered the room, the only thing he could do was blurt out that he couldn't do magic.

Bill froze.

"What do you mean you can't do magic?"

"I… can't. I just can't. Nothing's working. I've tried everything, but it never changes anything. I don't have any magic, and I'm useless, and I'll never be anything more than a burden to all of you. Look," he said, and to illustrate his point he waved the wand the way he had seen their parents wave their own wands a thousand times. "It doesn't work."

Bill sat down on the bed next to him, speechless. "I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't know. No one knows. They've all deluded themselves into thinking that I'm just a late-bloomer, that my magic will show up one day – after all, I'm a Weasley, and you're all going to be great wizards so why shouldn't I be one too? They don't want to see what's in front of them. They don't want to see me.

"But I know better. I have no magic, I never have and I never will." Percy's eyes burned with a feverish fire as he finally got to say everything that had been weighing him down.

"And it's not fair, it's not fair that you get it all, that you'll learn everything there is to know and that you'll be able to reshape the world around you while I'll be stuck watching it happen. It's not fair that I have to live in a world that will require of me things I'll never be able to do, that every morning when I wake up I'm surrounded by reminders that I'll never belong to the world I was born in."

At some point Bill had drawn him into an awkward hug, and Percy could feel himself slowly falling apart as the fury that had held him up drained away.

"It's going to be alright Perce, you'll see. It's all going to be alright," Bill whispered soothingly as he rubbed Percy's back.

"No it's not. It can't be, it just can't. I have no magic, I'll never be anything, I'll never be _great_."

"You don't have to have magic to be great Percy. You can be just great on your own."

"Really?"

"Really. Now, come on, dry your tears and let's go tell Mom and Dad about this."

Percy nodded and wiped his face clean the best he could, and followed his brother out of the bedroom.

_(A month later, he'd be starting classes at a Muggle primary school while his older brothers went back to Hogwarts.)_

**-x-x-x-**

The year Percy turned eighteen and graduated from high school with honors, Hogwarts organized its first Triwizard Games in centuries. In true magical fashion, everything went wrong faster than you can say Quidditch, and his little brother Ron's best friend, Harry Potter found himself enrolled as a Fourth Champion.

As they had become something of a surrogate family to the boy, they were all invited to witness the Tasks. Percy had been unable to come for the first two, but he hadn't wanted to miss the Third and last Task as well.

There, he met Oliver.

**-x-x-x-**

The meeting went like this:

Percy came with his father who Apparated them to the gates, but then he lost him as he took in for the first time the castle that could have been his home away from home for the last seven years. It was truly magnificent, and Percy lost himself in the crowd until he found himself in front of gigantic hedges that stood, from what his brothers had told him, at the Quidditch's Pitch usual place.

"It's horrific, what they've done to it, isn't it?"

The voice came from a man around his age, dressed in formal robes and wearing a dark look as he took in the maze.

Startled, Percy took a moment to answer. "I wouldn't know, this is the first time I've seen it… But I have to admit it's not the amazing sight I was promised."

And somehow this turned into an hour-long conversation about Quidditch, when Percy didn't even like Quidditch and hadn't really thought about it since he had gone with his family to the World Cup. He knew the rules though, and his brothers talked about the sport enough that he had picked up more than a little about most teams. Apparently that was enough for Oliver to swear he'd convert Percy.

Weirdly enough, Percy found he didn't care. Oliver made a very nice companion, and he was clearly passionate about his work. Hours flew by without him noticing until it was time for the Task to start, and they had to go to their seats.

"Here," Oliver said as he handed Percy a piece of parchment on which he had just scribbled his name and address. "Owl me whenever, and we could go have a drink sometime."

"I think I'd like that."

"Then it's a date."

"I don't have magic," Percy blurted out. He didn't know why but he felt obligated to warn the other man. It wouldn't be fair to let him think he was a wizard when he clearly wasn't.

Percy didn't know how he had expected Oliver to react to the news, but his easy smile certainly hadn't been it.

"I know."

"What do you mean, you know?"

"Well, you're a Weasley and I've never seen you at Hogwarts. Obviously you've never been there, and the only reason you wouldn't have gone is if you were to be a Squib. But it's fine. It doesn't matter. You're nice and I like you, and there's no need for you to have magic for that to happen."

He waved and disappeared into the crowd as Percy stayed rooted in place, not quite believing what had just happened.

Finally, he snapped out of his daze and went to find his family.

"You alright son?" His father questioned as soon as he appeared.

"Yes, yes I think so." Oliver's piece of parchment seemed to burn a hole in his pocked, and he couldn't quite stop fingering it. "I think I've just got myself a date."

Percy smiled and left it at that.

**-x-x-x-**

They went on one, two, three dates – and before he knew it, he and Oliver were tumbling into bed together, slightly awkward and certainly a little drunk.

When the morning came, it found them entangled in white sheets, deeply asleep and still in each other's arms.

_(once, on their second date, Oliver asked Percy how he felt, and Percy answered that he felt magical - they laughed so hard they thought they had cracked their ribs, and Percy finally understood what his brother had meant all those years ago when he had said that one didn't need magic to be great)_


End file.
